The Untold Lie

Christiaan Sabatelli

Here the low hills are stippled red and yellow; along the fence the Buttonbushes bluster their last berries between clumps of Fox Sedge. In the left pocket of this tattered jacket strands of corn-silk twist between my fingers. They are woman’s hair, when she follows you into the woods and untames herself, soft and tragic. Whatever I say of that night is a lie; the fretting of the Pitch Pines, the shock of damp as we sat in the Red Fescue. My breath came, visible against the evening, in little sobs, and she drew closer. The berry field blushed somewhere nearby, and the scent clutched at us. I did not want her, not then, not like that. And now, I feel the hands of children clutching me, their thin-legged bodies binding me to her. I feel the cold pressing in on the Aster flowers, see the River Oats turn copper. She is waiting, her hair wilting at her shoulder; she longs for the boy from that night, wants to be that girl again, misses the choices we both ceded then.